there must have been a wide range of different experiences of the tri-
umph and all kinds of different personal narratives prompted by it.
What, for example, of those who flogged refreshments to the crowds,
who put up the seating or cleared up the mess at the end of the day?
What of the spectators who found the sun too hot or the rain too wet,
who could hardly see the wonderful extravaganza that others applauded,
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 10:
The Arch of Trajan at Beneventum, 114–118 ce. Its sculpture commemorates
the achievements of the emperor in both peace and war; the small triumphal procession (Fig. 21) runs around the whole monument, just below the attic storey. Further sculpture would originally have stood on top, above the attic.
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
4 8
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 11:
Triumph of Tiberius, on a silver cup from Boscoreale. The future emperor
stands in the chariot, holding a scepter and laurel branch; behind, a slave holds a wreath or crown over his head. The exact date of the piece depends on which of Tiberius’ two triumphs is depicted: 7 bce or 12 ce.
or who found themselves mixed up in the outbreaks of violence that
could be prompted by the spectacle? The historian Dio reports “blood-
shed” at a controversial triumph in 54 bce.9 What kind of experience
was that for the by-standers?
These experiences are not entirely lost to us, even if we know much
less about them than most historians would now wish. Ovid, for exam-
ple, in his Ars Amatoria (Art of Love), turns his, and our, attention to the fun and games in the audience and to “conquests” of a different sort. He
presents the triumphal procession as a good place for a pick-up and ex-
plains to his learner-lover how to impress the girl in his sights with
pseudo-erudition:
The Impact of the Triumph
49
. . . Cheering youths will look on, and girls beside them,
A day to make every heart run wild for joy;
And when some girl inquires the names of the monarchs,
Or the towns, rivers, hills portrayed
On the floats, answer all her questions (and don’t draw the line at
Questions only): pretend
You know even when you don’t.10
We even catch an occasional glimpse of the infra-structure beneath
the lavish ceremonial, a glimpse of the workers and suppliers who made
the whole show possible. A tombstone in Rome, for example, commem-
orates a gladiator from Alexandria who came to the capital specially “for
the triumph of Trajan” in 117–118 and lists his bouts in the games that
followed the triumph: a draw on the second day, a victory on the ninth
against a man who had already fought nine fights—and then the text
breaks off.11 From a different angle, Varro in his treatise on agriculture
could see the triumph, and particularly the banquets that regularly came
after the procession itself, as a money-spinner for farmers. The aviary on
his aunt’s farm, he insists, had provided 5,000 thrushes for the triumph
of Caecilius Metellus in 71 bce. At twelve sesterces a piece, auntie had
raked in a grand total of 60,000 sesterces. All pomp and glory aside, she
and her fellow farmers had their own good reasons for welcoming the
announcement of a triumph.12
Yet the grip of the triumph on Roman culture is evident not only in
the details of performance and preparation, or in the memory or antici-
pation of the great day itself. The triumph was embedded in the ways
that Romans wrote, talked, and thought about their world; it was, as
the old cliché aptly puts it, “good to think with.” Sometimes the associa-
tion with victory, in a literal sense, remained strong. Seneca, for exam-
ple, refers to a gladiator optimistically called “Triumphus.” A town in
the province of Spain went under the name “Triumphale.” Vegetius, in
his military handbook, cites the phrase “emperor’s triumph” as a typi-
cal army security password. And, appropriately enough, during Rome’s
war against Hannibal, two prodigious infants were supposed to have
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R o m a n Tr i u m p h
5 0
uttered the words traditionally chanted in the triumphal procession:
“io triumpe.” The first infant was aged just six months; the second,
even more incredibly, made his voice heard from the womb. These did
not turn out to be good omens; the dreadful Roman defeat at Lake
Trasimene in 217 bce shortly followed the first utterance, and more than
a decade would pass after the second before Hannibal was finally de-
feated.13
Often, however, the forms, conventions, and hierarchies of the tri-
umph provided a vocabulary for discussing quite different aspects of Ro-
man life. Modern English too, of course, uses the word “triumph” and
its derivatives in a wide range of contexts, to mark out “triumphant”
theatrical performances or to brand motor cars and female underwear.
(“Triumph has a bra for the way you are,” as the advertising slogan ran.)
But our words evoke little more than a general sense of resounding suc-
cess. In ancient Rome, the ceremony itself remained a live presence in
almost every usage. Slaves in Roman comedy represented their clever
victories over their masters in parodies of technical triumphal vocabu-
lary. Seneca neatly encapsulated the virtue of clemency as a “triumph
over victory,” using exactly the same Latin formulation (“ex victoria
sua”) as for a triumph “over Spain” or wherever; and the triumph was re-
peatedly turned to in Roman philosophical debates on glory, morality,
and ethics. Early Christians reworked its conventions to express the “tri-
umph” of Jesus.14
Poets did more than celebrate triumphs of their patrons; they found
in the ceremony a model for activities as diverse as the pursuit of love
and the production of poetry itself. In a famous poem celebrating the
immortality of writing (“I have completed a monument more lasting
than bronze”) Horace deploys the technical vocabulary of the triumph
to vaunt his own achievements in bringing the traditions of Greek verse
into Latin. In appealing to the Muse to crown him with “Delphic lau-
rel,” he further blurs the boundary between poetry and triumph—laurel
being an emblem of both.15 Propertius exploits a similar theme, begin-
ning his third book of poems with a flamboyant image of himself and
his Muse in a triumph. On board his chariot (just like the young chil-
dren of a triumphant general) are his “little Loves” (parvi Amores)—Cu-
The Impact of the Triumph
51
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 12:
“The Triumph of Love.” Maarten van Heemskerck (1498–1574) captures the
theme of Petrarch’s Trionfi, with a victorious Cupid riding on a triumphal chariot. Around him are his prisoners—famous victims of Love, including the Latin poets Ovid and
Tibullus, Hercules, King Solomon, and the tragic lovers Pyramus and Thisbe. As the Latin verse beneath explains, they are making their way not to the Temple of Jupiter (who, phi-landerer that he is, shares the chariot with Cupid) but to the Temple of Venus on the hill.
pids, or perhaps his “love poems” themselves; and, behind, like the
general’s soldiers, a “crowd of other writers,” his poetic imitators who
share in his victory.16 Even more subversively, in his series of Amores